E. B. White: 10 memorable quotes on his birthday

Born on July 11, 1899, the much-loved children’s book writer, E. B. White, was the son of a piano manufacturer who lived in Mount Vernon, New York. White attended Cornell University and was offered a teaching position at the University of Minnesota after graduating, but chose not to accept in order to follow his dream of becoming a writer. He worked as a writer for several newspapers in the following years and served as a contributing editor for the New Yorker for most of his writing career. He co-authored the widely read English language style guide, "The Elements of Style." White’s most famous works are the children’s books "Stuart Little" (1945), "Charlotte's Web" (1952), and "The Trumpet of the Swan" (1973). In addition to his children’s books, White published more than 17 books of essays, prose, and poetry. In 1978 White won the Pulitzer Prize for his work as a whole. White died on October 1, 1985.

1. Plans

Public Domain

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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